Above: Augustine: Civitate Dei [1489]

For this year’s Printer’s Fair, the International Printing Museum will be hosting a special exhibit of antiquarian and historic books from the library of a local book collector, in the gallery of the workshop building. The exhibit will have two parts. In the spirit of this year’s theme, A Celebration of Paper & Print, we will be presenting The First Information Revolution: The Printed Book from Gutenberg to Franklin; a gathering of printed books from the 15th to the 19th centuries. Among the books on display will be St. Augustine’s Civitate Dei, Sebastian Brant’s Stultifera Navis, examples from the Venetian printing house of Aldus Manutius, incunabula and early printing, and examples of major printing centers of Europe from the earliest days of the craft of printing. To show the power of the press, an early copy of the Malleus Maleficarum, the handbook of the Roman Inquisition will be exhibited alongside other books on witchcraft, sorcery and superstition. A rare copy of a London imprint of the writings of Savonarola (only one of two copies in America) will be shown, as well as a 1554 woodcut title-page by Hans Holbein, and the first 16th century Stowe edition of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. As examples of American colonial printing, there will be two books from the press of Benjamin Franklin, our favorite American printer. An full exhibition brochure will be available.

THESE BOOKS PLUS MORE ON VIEW FOR ONE DAY ONLY AT THE FAIR:

Chaucer: Canterbury Tales [1561]

Book of Hours [1471]

Bevilaqua: Bible [1498]

Foxe: Workes of John Tyndall [1573]

Statius: Sylvarum [Aldus Manutius, 1502]

Pontanus: Opera [Aldus Manutius, 1505]

Guidi: Medecine [1555]

Bocaccio: Decameron [1557]

Bodin: Demonomanie des sorciers [1598]

Granatensi: Memoriale [1598]

Barrough: Physick [1601]

Melton: Astrologaster [1620]

Bromhall: Spectres [1658]

Saunders: Astrology [1677]

Cicero: Cato major [Franklin, 1744]

Franklin: Spirit of prayer [1760]